Walt Whitman In parting with traditional poetic formalities, Walt Whitman alleviated a burden that impeded his ability to achieve full poetic expression. To Whitman, the strict boundaries that formal meter, structure, and rhyme imposed set limits on his stylistic freedom. This is not to say that these limits prevented Whitman from conveying his themes. Rather, they presented a contradiction to which Whitman refused to conform. In Whitman's eyes, to meet these formal guidelines one would …showed first 75 words of 1765 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1765 total…said that Whitman led a personal crusade against what he believed was an ornamental style. Whether motivated by thirst for publicity (Whitman was somewhat of a public celebrity in his day), true literary idealism, or both, Whitman forged his own literary style to convey his themes of the 'living' individual, free from any constrains of formal poetry. This freedom of thought, this unpredictability of action, has made Walt Whitman a quintessential example of American individualism.